All the
difference is, that the last chapter is wanting in the story. If
a man of power tries to do a great deed, and just falls short of
it by an accident not his fault, up to that time his history had
as much in it as that of a great man who has done his great deed.
It is whimsical of the world to hold that particulars of how a lad
went to school and so on should be as an interesting romance or as
nothing to them, precisely in proportion to his after renown.'
They were walking between the sunset and the moonrise. With the
dropping of the sun a nearly full moon had begun to raise itself.
Their shadows, as cast by the western glare, showed signs of
becoming obliterated in the interest of a rival pair in the
opposite direction which the moon was bringing to distinctness.
'I consider my life to some extent a failure,' said Knight again
after a pause, during which he had noticed the antagonistic
shadows.
'You! How?'
'I don't precisely know. But in some way I have missed the mark.'
'Really? To have done it is not much to be sad about, but to feel
that you have done it must be a cause of sorrow. Am I right?'
'Partly, though not quite. For a sensation of being profoundly
experienced serves as a sort of consolation to people who are
conscious of having taken wrong turnings. Contradictory as it
seems, there is nothing truer than that people who have always
gone right don't know half as much about the nature and ways of
going right as those do who have gone wrong.
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